If you study a map of Spain, in the south-east corner you’ll see a strip of empty space along the edge of the Mediterranean. It contains no major towns and barely any roads. Its coastline is equally barren – no ports or resorts; just a few tiny villages tucked away in intriguingly named coves – “raven”, “coal”, “bitter water”. This patch of emptiness is the Cabo de Gata-Níjar national park, a protected haven of desert wilderness on the edge of Europe.
Having been forced to cancel an expedition to the Algerian Sahara earlier in the year, this park appears to be the answer to my yearning for the arid warmth and stark beauty of desert travel. Zooming in on the satellite view, a network of paths appears, suggesting a walking route of around 40 miles (64km) – from the Cabo itself, up the coast, along the cliffs, to the beach town of Agua Amarga. My husband, a keen Iberophile and relentless explorer of España vacia (literally, empty Spain) is always up for a wilderness adventure, so we get in the van and head south.
This trek is no camino. There’s no set route, waymarkers or pilgrim-ready hostelries. It’s more a collection of stony goat tracks, old mining routes and dirt roads connecting the fishing villages, beaches and coves of the national park, many of which are accessible by foot only. There’s little in the way of tourist infrastructure, especially off season, but just enough hotels and shops stay open to make an unsupported walk viable. The longest stretch without civilisation is about 10 miles, and navigation is easy: keep the sea on your right.
We begin our journey at the Faro de Cabo de Gata, the lighthouse at the tip of the peninsula, where we park our van, heave on a rucksack loaded with oranges, and set out along the cliff. In these first steps we are rendered speechless by the natural beauty all around us. The stony hills are alive with wildflowers in pink and yellow, and the Mediterranean shimmers a silvery-turquoise under the pure, clean sunlight. Inland, the barren mountains stretch away like a vast choppy sea. It’s hard to imagine the real world bustling away beyond their jagged skyline.
The contours of the map reveal a fair amount of undulation ahead and we admit that our younger, fitter selves could have knocked this out in three days, but we’ve set aside a leisurely five, for swimming and exploring along the way. Taking a breather on the cliff edge, it’s clear it was the right decision. This is not a journey to be rushed. The air is warm, scented with wild rosemary, lavender and sage. Spiky aloe, prickly pear and flowering succulents line the trail. We follow the rugged coastline, descending towards our destination for the first night, the small town of San José. With its palm trees and whitewashed buildings around a crescent bay, it beckons like a 1930s travel poster for north Africa.
San José is small but it’s the biggest town for miles, and a good halt for stocking up on supplies, or as a base to explore if the full walk isn’t an option. Joe Strummer of the Clash made this place home in the 1990s, having fallen in love with the area while filming Alex Cox’s Straight to Hell in the nearby Tabernas Desert. The locals still tell tales of him singing in the beach bars, knocking back rum and cokes.
In the summer, San José is a busy holiday destination but out of season it transforms into a sleepy one-horse town. Fortunately, the small beachfront Hotel Doña Pakyta stays open all year round, which is fitting, considering its namesake, without whom this corner of Spain would look very different. Doña Pakyta was a Spanish businesswoman and environmentalist, who worked tirelessly to protect the unique Almerian desert and its spectacular coastline from the onslaught of developers in the 1960s.
The owner of 3,300 hectares (8,200 acres) of land around San José, she was deeply connected to the landscape, flora and traditions of the area, and as she watched Spain’s southern coast become ravaged by mass tourism, she held out for her beloved Cabo de Gata, allowing full public access to her beaches and refusing to let her land be built upon. Now the park’s 178 sq miles are a Unesco protected biosphere and Doña Pakyta (also known as Francisca Torres Díaz) was immortalised as a favourite daughter of Andalucía in 2010, the highest distinction to be awarded by the region.
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I am grateful to her at every step, gasping in delight verging on disbelief as each secret cove and pristine white sand beach reveals itself. Apart from the tiny villages of Los Escuellos, Isleta del Moro and the slightly larger Las Negras, the only signs of civilisation along the coast are the ruins of 18th-century forts that were built to fend off pirates, and the ghostly remains of a goldmine that closed in the 1960s.
Other walkers are few and far between, and the first two days pass by with just a handful of human sightings. We’ve become used to our solitary status so it’s a shock to emerge at the beach of Cala de San Pedro and find ourselves in what appears to be a human settlement of driftwood shelters, vegetable plots, a ramshackle beach bar, and even a composting toilet for visitors. It’s as though we’ve stumbled into the movie The Beach, and it’s even more astounding as there is no road access to the cove – everything here has been brought in by sea or on foot. This, it transpires, is Spain’s last surviving hippy commune, set up in the 1960s and still home to a group of about 50 inhabitants.
It’s easy to see why they stayed. Not only is it the ultimate idyll, but the climb out is the toughest of the entire walk – a steep, 250-metre ascent of rocky, twisty narrow tracks requiring the occasional scramble. At the top, we lie supine among gorse and wild thyme, gazing down at the next immaculate beach, Cala del Plomo. This one is empty apart from a corral of campervans bearing signs advising visitors to be “mindful of the energy they’re bringing into this space”. We resist the temptation to make mischief and drag our last scraps of energy into the sea for a sunset skinny dip.
As day five closes with another golden sunset, Agua Amarga beckons and we arrive via a giddy descent that delivers us right outside the town’s only out-of-season hotel. We feel deserving of this last-night luxury but also strangely bereft at our return to civilisation and the imminent taxi back to our van. The simple act of getting up and walking each day in these bright, pure surroundings has been so satisfying to the mind and body, I want to keep going, into the mountainous hinterland, along the dry riverbeds, winding among the cacti and palms for ever. It may not be the Sahara but it’s our own little European desert, and it’s just perfect.
For more information visit cabogataalmeria.com; the Cabo de Gata Nijar, Guide and Map: Natural Park and Coast of Almeria is useful for route planning.